The Extreme Milkshake to End The Madness

Our photographer Alana Dimou has clearly cracked under the pressure.

Photography: Alana Dimou

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Photography: Alana Dimou

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Published on 19 August 2015

by Tacey Rychter

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Extreme milkshakes, freakshakes. It started in Canberra at a cafe called Pâtissez, and has since spread to Melbourne (at Johnny Pump in Essendon) and Sydney (XS Espresso and Foodcraft Espresso) and is continuing its lactose-fuelled march.

Today it’s a Nutella doughnut topping your jar of dairy, tomorrow it’s a leg of lamb, next week? It could be your first-born child. If we’ve learned anything about social-media trends, it only ends once pushed to its most ridiculous point – one that light and parody cannot escape. A meme event horizon.

Broadsheet photographer Alana Dimou is fighting back. For her food-photography blog Alana Bread, she’s created a visual representation of our dystopian future should freakshakes continue to tighten their stranglehold on society. Behold.

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“I don’t really know why I did it,” Dimou says. “I saw a comical image in my head inspired by everybody’s frenzied response, and I made it happen, it’s as simple as that.

“Using food as a tool for sculpture is really fun, and in retrospect, I think the photos were just documentation of me having a brain-snap moment, creating something truly idiotic, amusing, gross yet evocative. I’m sad nobody got to see them IRL. If there were a way of preserving food like that I would have kept them all in my home forever, like an offensive bust.”

See more of Alana’s work here and here. If you’re still hungry for extreme milkshakes, find them at Johnny Pump at 87 Fletcher Street, Essendon.